LDF announces landmark projects and an identity refresh by Pentagram

The London Design Festival has announced its landmark projects for 2016 and a refresh of its visual identity by Pentagram. This year, from 17 – 25 September, will see more than 400 events and installations take place across the capital bringing together an international roster of designers, artists, architects and retailers to “activate projects responding to the transformative powers of design,” say the organisers.

This year, Trafalgar Square will host a crazy golf course, currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with holes designed by the likes of Paul Smith, the late Zaha Hadid, Atelier Bow-wow and more. At the V&A, Glithero has partnered with Italian luxury watchmaker Panerai for an installation called The Green Room that will delineate the space of a stairwell by creating a thin veil of threads that is kept in a constant, gentle motion by a CAM arm that emulates the movement of a clock. Matthieu Lehanneur will install Liquid Marble, a variation on his ongoing investigation into the materiality of marble, in the galleries and outside, in the courtyard, robots will build the Elytra Filament Pavilion (which we covered earlier in the year). Also at the museum design studio Layer will create Foil, a 20m-long installation comprising 40,000 individual metallic elements inspired by the foil of an electric razor.

Elsewhere across the city, Alison Brooks Architects will create The Smile, an inhabitable structure created using American Tulipwood CLT which the architect says will be “an undulating environment, something between a landscape, an adventure playground, a bridge and a diving board.” Continuing the CLT theme, architect DRMM will create Baboushka Boxes, another inhabitable installation that will, along with charity Shelter, explore the topic of housing.

Alongside the citywide celebrations, LDF sees the return of partner exhibitions 100% Design, Decorex international, Design Junction and more. There are also eight design districts, with Brixton being added to the programme for the first time.

The identity for LDF has been refreshed by Pentagram this year. The design responds to the Eames’ mantra that design is in the detail and has zoomed in on the typographic detail of the LDF logotype, “zooming into the negative spaces and elegant swashes of the typographic message itself.” Dominic Lippa, the partner at Pentagram who led the project, said: “The wonderful thing about type is when you use it in such a large scale and then crop it, you are often left with wonderful positive and negative shapes which have come out of the individual letterforms. The result is unmistakeably ‘London Design Festival’ but introduces an element that is engaging and playful as well as being classic and modern.”

Three dimensional renders are featuring more and more within everyday design, from adverts for cars to Ikea using 3D tools to computer generate its catalogue. As the ability to integrate 3D objects not only becomes easier but more realistic, it is understandable that graphic designers are eager to learn how they can get involved, to save money on mock ups and take a project that extra mile.

In the two years since Adobe Stock was rolled out, the Adobe archive has grown to an astounding 90 million+ assets, meaning that for any creative project you’re working on, Adobe can provide high quality photos, videos, graphics and illustrations.

“I’ve always been teaching and a part of education,” comments Dutch designer Jurgen Bey. “It’s the common place, it’s where all knowledge is shared. And it’s also the place where the future always exists. If you have students no matter how bad it goes with life or reality.” Such tenacious optimism for the future has illuminated Jurgen’s dual career as an influential designer and educator. Jurgen leads Studio Makkink & Bey in Rotterdam which works in applied art and public space projects, and he is also the director of the Sandberg Institute, the postgraduate program of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

Founded in 1997 by Colette Roussaux, cult Parisian store Colette has – in its two decade lifetime – established itself as one of the world’s most influential hubs for compelling, cutting-edge fashion and design. With Colette’s daughter Sarah Andelman working as creative director it also became a leading light in illustration and graphic art, giving a platform to the creative industry’s renowned innovators and creators. So, when last week the store posted a statement on Instagram saying “all good things must come to an end” and it would be closing its doors on 20 December 2017, there was an outpouring of love, support and reminiscences from across the industry.

At the end of the academic year, graduates from a breadth of courses at Central Saint Martins, UAL showcase their work to the creative industries in an impressive pair of degree shows. Global marketing communications agency MullenLowe Group sees this as an opportunity to invest in the university’s emerging talent, by sponsoring the degree shows and running the MullenLowe NOVA Awards, now in its seventh year.

“I always say that I don’t have big ideas, I just have lots of little ones that fill the same amount of time,” explains London artist Kate Moross. “I much prefer to take things a little bit at a time and change things that way. I think change is lots of small steps, not necessarily always the big things.” This small-idea ethos has helped Kate forge a genre-defying career as a graphic artist: she founded the London design agency Studio Moross in 2012, started the vinyl label Isomorph Records, and penned the DIY guide Make Your Own Luck. Her work has spanned from music videos to designing the tour visuals for One Direction. “I very much don’t conform to what most people think of what a graphic designer would be,” Kate confesses.